CABAG

CABAG, 110, a woman with too much talk. A chabag! dùin do bhial, [chatterbox, shut your mouth!] 130, an impertinent talkative woman.

 

CABAG, 132, a useless notched tool. Cabag do thuaigh. Cabag do thàl. [A notched axe. A notched adze.]

 

CAB, noun, 129, Scotch ‘gab’, a mouth that never ceases to speak. Cha téid fois air a cab, [her mouth never rests]. Cha téid abhsadh air a cab [her mouth is never tired].

 

Dwelly has “toothless female; tattling woman; any blunt or toothless instrument; hacked instrument, as a knife; and rarely, strumpet.”

This is commonly used still. Catrìona Walker in Eriskay described a cabag as “Somebody who was good at talking, and wouldn’t stop talking, and nobody would get a word in once they’d started.” She said they were no specific age, but “any female that was good at talking”.

Màiri Thormoid in Eriskay told me “Oh, that was pretty common in the past, isn’t she the cabag.”

Domhnall Ruaraidh Campbell in South Uist told me that a cabag was “a girl or woman that blethers, maybe talking about other people, what was going on in the town, relating everything that was happening. We used it at school too, when somebody told on you at school you’d say she was a cabag.”

 

 

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